Koviem Is the New Bespoke Suiting Brand Making Power Suits for Women
Kevwe Mowarin has always loved fashion — she just never expected to pursue a career in it. After studying finance in college, she accepted a job as an investment banking analyst at Credit Suisse in Manhattan upon graduation in the summer of 2016. Ironically, it was there, during her 80 to 100-hour office-bound workweeks, where a bud of creativity began to blossom in her head, pulling her in a very different professional direction. “I had to wear suits every day and wanted to get one I would love but everywhere I went I was finding that the jacket arm length was too small or the pants didn’t fit,” the 23-year-old tells Teen Vogue. “I asked my female coworkers where they got theirs and they told me they were custom. I looked, but I couldn’t find a tailor anywhere in New York that specializes in custom suits for women. That’s where the idea for Koviem started.”
At first, Kevwe was designing suits only for herself, drawing out silhouettes, selecting fabrics, and having them made in New York City. But once her female coworkers and friends started to take notice of her co-ords, the inquiries began rolling in. “It just spread by word of mouth. If you needed a suit, you could come to me for an official consultation. I loved it, the passion is what drove me to do it,” remembers Kevwe, who was balancing her fledgling business with her demanding full-time job. Along with the passion was the timing; the Koviem brand was conceptualized during the 2016 presidential campaign, when the pantsuit took on an important new meaning. It became a sartorial symbol of strength, perseverance, resistance, feminism, equality, hope, progress. “I think [the] election is what made me decide to launch when I did,” says Kevwe. “I wanted to provide women with something that would make them feel like they could take on the world. I don’t think there’s any other piece of clothing that makes you feel more powerful than a pantsuit.”
Although she had no formal training in design, Kevwe had studied in Milan for seven months while in college and had taken courses relating to management within fashion companies while abroad. “I did a lot of field research involving big fashion houses — the Guccis and Pradas of the world,” she says. “It was a great place for my love of fashion and expertise in finance to come together.” Ultimately, her learnings would provide an invaluable base layer of knowledge when it came to starting her own business.
In late 2017, after a little over a year at Credit Suisse, Kevwe decided to quit investment banking and accepted a role as a corporate strategy and finance associate at a startup. “I wanted to have the time to focus on Koviem and see where it could go,” she explains. Her passion project bloomed. The relatively lax work environment not only allowed her more time to finesse her business model, but also to experiment with trendier, more creative designs. “I no longer had to wear the tradition black and gray suit but I still wanted to look put together,” she said. “I started looking into where I could get a fun, casual suit but again, I couldn’t find that option in the marketplace. That’s why I started offering colorful suits in different silhouettes, along with more traditional options.”
Currently, Koviem offers four silhouettes: There’s The Milano Suit, which the brand’s website refers to as “the ultimate power suit”; The Millennial Suit, which has a decidedly more casual feel to it (“it’s a suit you can wear to brunch on the weekend,” says Kevwe); The Monrovia Suit, which is collarless and bound to be a fashion girl favorite; and The Manhattan Suit, which is perfect for any corporate setting. Understanding that the biggest appeal of custom clothing is its singularity, Kevwe offers each suit in around five colorways, but only makes a limited amount of each. “Part of the allure of having a custom suit is that it’s something that is personal and unique,” she says. “So we put a cap on each suit in each colorway so they won’t oversaturate the market.” New colors and fabrics are released each season (silks are next on the roster), and more silhouettes inspired by Kevwe’s travels will also be dropping shortly.
In order to ensure each suit fits perfectly, Koviem just launched a new AI sizing feature on their website. All a customer has to do is take two photos of themselves and enter their height and gender, and an application programming interface will use spatial referencing to measure the human body with 97 percent accuracy. “My vision for Koviem has always been that fit should be a problem of the past. We initially solved this by making all pieces using the measurements input by the customer. The AI sizing is the next step,” says Kevwe. “That’s one thing Koviem is doing — we’re disrupting that very traditional bespoke model by infusing tech into it and making it available to everyone. We’re democratizing fashion.”
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